DOH! bye bye Allaire Stock! Jeff, this sounds fantastic! And I'd love to see it.... just a small warning. Allaire might not take kindly to this, I don't know if they have any standing ground since you're actually copying their code (i'm assuming), but they have a lot of money, so expect to get a cease & desist order at your doorsteps. Until then, tell us more! Steve Jeff Bevill wrote: > > Dear CF Enthusiasts, > > A few friends and I over the past 1 1/2 yrs have been working on creating an > Open Source CFML parser engine that is somewhat similar to the commercial > product (CF server). Currently, there is support for most of the > tags/functions up to version 4.0 that don't have anything to do with > platform dependencies (file permissions on unix - mode 777, etc). The > engine is very basic and pretty much lame since we have no clue what the > hell we are doing, it's a project that started mainly for amusement at the > time. Although, one could actually install this software and run a pretty > simple (very simple at this point) cfml driven web site (install requires > someone with knowledge involving autoconf, make, gcc or MSVC) on a few > different platforms (unix apache / win32 iis). We have also taken a stab at > a CFML/HTML editor on linux using GTK+, this is also very pre-alpha. The > editor (especially for non windows platforms) is quite complicated and would > take awhile to complete due to the need for html editor/browser > functionality (I believe the browser portion in HomeSite/CF Studio is > implemented using the IE re-usable broswer technology, but I'm not sure). > > The database connection support is extremely limited with just MySQL/plain > file (yes it's lame) support now, but other drivers could easily be added > since the design of the software is extremely modular (we studied PHP engine > src quite extensively). Everything is driven via an abstraction API > (database drivers, thread libraries, web server api's, etc.) modular > interface to ease the use of porting to multiple platforms. Most of the > code is written in C as my C++ knowledge is very rusty, but getting better. > I plan on converting to C++ as this will help many security hole related > issues (buffer overflows, type checking, etc..) come to the fore front and > would be more object oriented. > > As an intermediate user of the CFML language over the years I have had many > ideas and additions that I wanted to add to Cold Fusion, but I thought it > would be more fun to learn how to develop an actual engine to test the ideas > first before recommending them. I would have to say developing one of these > engines is not easy. We are a year and 1/2 into it (extremely part time. > Sometimes taking off months to do other stuff ... like make a living) and > have probably another few years of part time development (at least) to make > it more feature rich/stable (unless of course this becomes a heavily worked > on project by many of you guru developers out there). Even so, I am > seriously considering trashing the whole project for something else. > Allaire is just creating a kick ass product and their customer support is > great. Some people ask why I am "re-inventing" the wheel. Again, it was > started for fun. > > I guess my main reason for posting the expose of this software on the > cf-list list is to put a 'feeler' out to see if people want an open source > version. We wonder if developers would actually want to spend the time > working on it with us. Many great innovations have came from open source > software and it's damn fun as well. *8-) > > We haven't released the software to anyone and we're not planning on it > until we get some legal advice and hear what people think. We also have no > intentions of making Allaire lose revenue with this software. Like I said, > it was just a fun and amusing project we started a year ago. Allaire has > also released a crippled version that has most of the functionality of the > regular server and it is free for many OS. Another reason why I'm > considering trashing the project. > > As you can see I'm quite paranoid about this project, heh. If someone from > Allaire is reading this, what are your thoughts on this ? > > Any thoughts, flames, etc would be great. Would any of you want an open > source version ? If so what are the legal issues involved ? Is it possible > to create something that is stable enough, rich feature set, and worth using > ? Anyone else think this sort of development is fun besides me ? Is there > any open source version already available (I haven't seen one, at least > nothing that works worth a darn) ? > > I have mentioned a bit about the software on IRC #coldfusion / efnet and > have gotten several positive inquires, but I still need to research this a > little more. This list is great way to do that. > > Thanks, > > Jeff Bevill > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ > Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists or send a message >with 'unsubscribe' in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists or send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
